SOME RECKON the relationship between Aberdeen and Jimmy Calderwood is like a soap opera. Actually it is far more predictable than that. The plot never really changes around Pittodrie and this beleaguered manager. It's the same storyline on a loop. Aberdeen grind along delivering solid but unremarkable league results and then twice a season the whole club gets its trousers pulled down in the cups.
So here we are again, out of another tournament, Calderwood getting dog's abuse from all angles and the board grimly standing by their man. Once again they will close ranks, cross their fingers and pray that league results pick up until the storm passes. That's what tends to happen. If Calderwood is true to form they will rally a little, secure one of the Europa League spots, maybe pull off a result against Celtic or Rangers. The current clamour for him to be sacked will die down. This is the football equivalent of subsistence farming. It is about doing enough - just - to survive all the serial cup humiliations which make the club a laughing stock.
The Aberdeen Supporters' Society last week sent a letter to Willie Miller which all but called for Calderwood's head to be stuck on a spike outside The Pittodrie Bar. Clubs would have you believe that these sort of gestures are the acts of irrational hotheads, but that doesn't wash. Something similar happened at Inverness in January, Craig Brewster was gone within days, and Caley Thistle's results have been the better for it. There is a difference between being bottom of the league and being in the hunt for a European place, though. Aberdeen now need to salvage something from their season and creating further upheaval would make no sense. It's in the summer that the decision has to be made.
There isn't a single thing the Aberdeen directors can say to appease or change the minds of those supporters who want the manager out. Stability, improved league status, a general sense of restoration, European football: all have been achieved under Calderwood and all of that has been duly recognised. He landed the job when one of the biggest clubs in Scotland was on its knees and the room for improvement was enormous. But what now? When things are on an even keel it isn't much of an achievement to keep Aberdeen in the top six and challenging for a European place, not when there was £150,000 handed over to buy Charlie Mulgrew, £75,000 for Tommy Wright and £50,000 for Sone Aluko.
Aberdeen haven't been close to winning anything for years. Hibs, Hearts, Motherwell, Dunfermline (twice), Dundee United (twice), Kilmarnock, Gretna and Queen of the South have all appeared in cup finals since Calderwood came to Aberdeen. Whenever his teams get close they turn to jelly. Last season only a First Division side stood between them and the final, and they blew it.
This season they could have made it to the final without facing a single team in the top 10 of the SPL, and they blew it again. For the last three seasons their every cup exit has been dismal: Queen's Park, Hibs (by 4-1), Dundee United (4-1 again), Queen of the South (4-3), Kilmarnock (4-2) and now Dunfermline. Calderwood has said he won't feel fulfilled at Aberdeen until he has delivered a trophy for the club. It isn't going to happen.
Managers get sacked for league results, not cup ones (John Barnes and Celtic excepted). But in remaining loyal to Calderwood the Aberdeen directors are going against the will of a huge section of the support they will soon be asking to shell out for new season tickets. When the team was bottom of the league in October Calderwood saved his skin by inspiring a run which hauled them up the table, but there have been only two wins in the last 11 games and losing to Dunfermline underlined all sorts of concerns about Aberdeen's motivation, character, substance and tactics. In the stands a vast number are sick and tired of it. Average attendances have declined in each of the last three seasons at Pittodrie and there will be another decrease at the end of this one.
Aberdeen face three decisions in the summer. Will they bite the bullet and sack Calderwood? Can they afford to pay him off? And can they identify someone who could be tempted to come and do a better job? If their track record is anything to go by this conservative, cautious club will grimly soldier on with him. Calderwood is only a year into a three-year contract and chairman Stewart Milne isn't likely to be mistaken for Roman Abramovich when it comes to gratuitous spending.
And so the supporters will feel resentful and disenfranchised and Calderwood will be embedded and unloved. He would be off in a flash if a decent club came in for him. As soon as things go well he talks of moving on and of having taken Aberdeen as far as he can, and he is linked with alternative job offers which never come to anything. And then another bleak cup result comes along to give him a gigantic kick up the backside.
It's the same storyline on a loop. Aberdeen and Calderwood, locked together in a joyless marriage.
